Sam Spong Wins National WorldSkills Competition

Bricklaying’s 2014 WorldSkills national competition in Perth saw Sam Spong from New Berrima NSW win the Gold Medal in Bricklaying. Matthew Cheso from Murray Bridge SA won the Silver Medal and the Bronze Medal went to Nicholas Coci from Carabooda WA. Well done to you all.

Sam deserves enormous credit for his courageous win against a high quality field, each young person aspiring to excel at building what was a complex brick and block project in just 18 hours. The standard of bricklaying from the fourteen competitors was the highest for many years!

The WorldSkills Australia national competition involved more than 500 competitors from many trades and occupations. Our bricklaying competition attracted many onlookers admiring the skills of the talented young bricklayers on display during the event. As it always does, the speed test especially attracted a large crowd on the second day with Nicholas Coci also winning the ABBTF Gun Trowel award for building the best four brick pier in the allotted fifteen minutes. Well done Nic!

Sam Spong also competed in the WorldSkills Australia national competition in 2012 and has worked extremely hard in training and preparing for this event. He was very focused and showed his great skills to be a worthy winner with a result well ahead of the field.

Sam and all the competitors bring great credit to themselves and the trade by their efforts and they have the ABBTF team’s warmest congratulations. They are an inspiration to young people and we expect many will start an apprenticeship with the ambition to follow our 2014 competitor’s footsteps. To win overall, as Sam has done is tremendous, but other competitors should not underrate the importance of having reached national competition level in your trade.